of the Marmots of North America. 585 



Length from the nose to the insertion of the tail twenty nidus. 

 Nose blunt and dark: hair on the clmLs and chin short. 

 inclining to grey, on the top of the //<</*/ dark brown j on •>■ 

 short, round, rather bare, appearing above the hair of the 

 head; cheeks not much puffed : the mhakert as well as the 

 long hairs growing over the eyes stiff and black: Uppei 

 fore-teeth long and round, the lower Longer and smaller. 

 The whole upper part of the bodj nearly alike, the hairs 

 being dark at their base, yellowish in the middle and black 

 at the top, with the tips white, but there is less appearance 

 of the white towards the tail: throat, legs, and all the under- 

 parts dark chesnut ; tail six inches long, hair throughout 

 dusky, without white tips, longer than on the back, darker 

 at the end. Toes black, covered with short dark hairs : the 

 inner ones on the hind-feet and the outer ones on the fore- 

 feet shorter : rudiment of a fifth toe inside of the fore-feet ; 

 claws long and sharp, those on the fore-feet longest and more 

 arched. 



This description is from a specimen presented by the Hudson's 

 Bay Company to the British Museum. 



The animal was first described in 1771 by Mr. Pennant in his 

 Synopsis of Quadrupeds from a living specimen ; and subse- 

 quently in 1772, in the Philosophical Transactions, by Mr. John 

 Reinhold Forster, from a specimen sent, with several other sub- 

 jects of natural history, from Hudson's Bay by Mr. Graham, 

 and deposited in the Museum of the Royal Society ; but that 

 specimen was only eleven inches, and the tail three inches long; 

 it could not therefore have been fully grown. Pallas described 

 the animal from a specimen in the Leyden Museum, and gave 

 it the name of Empetra; this did not exceed a foot in length, and 

 its tail was only two inches and a half long. It is the animal which 



the 



